Touhou Chireiden (Earth Spirit Palace) ~ Subterranean Animism (東方地霊殿 ～ Subterranean Animism) is the eleventh official game in the Touhou Project. The trial version was released at Reitaisai 5, and the full version debuted at Comiket 74.

Contents

Gameplay

Subterranean Animism features two playable characters (Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame), each with three weapon types representing a youkai assisting them from above ground. Collecting power items adds up to four "option" satellites around the character (or eight for the Marisa/Alice combination), which behave differently according to the character and weapon type. Power can be used to unleash a bomb, each with different behaviors, and some cause special gameplay effects to occur.

The scoring system is based on grazing, coupled with the collection of items dropped by enemies. As such, the player is urged to actively graze at every possible opportunity in order to increase the point item value. Grazing large amounts of bullets in little time is rewarded by the temporary effect of autocollecting all the freefalling items at their maximum value (identical to the point of collection effect, but without regard to the character's location on the screen), letting the player concentrate on avoiding bullets.

Concept

Attention: This section is a stub and it needs expanding with more information related to the section's topic. If you can add to it in any way, please do so.

You may improve one (or more) of the following points: <toggledisplay showtext="Show" hidetext="Hide">

Needs to be filled in

</toggledisplay>

ZUN has stated that the entire story was a result of his decision to use a partner system in this game, just like Imperishable Night. The partners for Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame in Imperishable Night both show up again as the first choice.

A difference from other games is that you can still get good endings when finishing the game on easy mode. However, the extra stage only gets enabled after a 1cc on normal mode.

Story

Suddenly a geyser erupted out of nowhere, which Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame took advantage of, even though a higher amount of earth spirits showed up. But others got worried, and wanted them to go down into the Underworld, with a device Yukari Yakumo made so they could talk even underground.

Afterwards, the heroine visits the Moriya Shrine to talk with Kanako Yasaka and Suwako Moriya. The goddesses were not there, but she does meet Satori's sister, Koishi Komeiji, who wanted to go to the Moriya Shrine to ask the gods to empower her pets. In the end, they have a duel because Koishi wanted to see if the person who defeated her sister was really that strong.

Music

Just like Mountain of Faith, Subterranean Animism had 18 tracks, but only 17 can be heard in the music room. The 18th track, "Player's Score" (プレイヤーズスコア), is copied over from Mountain of Faith.

The title screen is just like any other title screen, an arrangement of "Theme of Eastern Story" (テーマ・オブ・イースタンストーリー) from Akyu's Untouched Score vol.5. A recurring theme in the earlier stages of the game is that it is "cave-like", with lots of echos.